Bananas, cannas and lantanas co-exist in unplanned profusion

Sep. 27, 2013

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Written by

Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp

Starr correspondent

irvin color combos 3394 'Miss Huff' lantana and 'Black and Blue' salvia create a colorful combination. In his yard, the salvia returns each year but the lantana is dug up and brought indoors.

Irvin Etienne’s Words of Wisdom

• Weeds are always going to be there. So what? • Try one new plant a year. And I don’t mean switching from a Rutgers tomato to a Brandywine. • It’s only a garden and nobody’s going to die if the plants don’t work out. • You have to kill a lot of plants to get to be a good gardener. I don’t think a lot of people understand that.

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You can’t miss Irvin Etienne’s home on a narrow Fountain Square street, where cannas and bananas stand tall and the flowers of four o’clocks and salvias spill onto the sidewalk.

A riot of colors follows the narrow sidewalk through the narrow yard around the narrow 1885-era house. It’s clear there’s nothing narrow about the mind of the gardener who lives here.

In his day job, Etienne is the horticulture display coordinator at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. A board member of the Perennial Plant Association, the IMA’s award-winning blogger is known nationally for his love and knowledge of tropical plants and fashionable containers.

“At the IMA, plantings are planned and organized. It’s art and plantings designed on paper. At home, it’s in my head. Sometimes it gets out of the my head,” said Etienne, 53, from his contemporary kitchen with windows open to the backyard. He probably loves to cook as much as he loves gardening and points with pride to an orange Kitchen Aid stand mixer.

In fact, orange is his favorite color. In his garden, there are orange blooming cannas, lantanas and dahlias. Then there’s chartreuse, perhaps his second favorite color, followed by purples.

Many of the plants are in pots, which make it easier to move the tropicals to the basement, his office at the IMA or elsewhere for the winter. Some of the tropicals stay outdoors, such as the hardy bananas and others that seem to thrive in the microclimate of urban living.

“I always try to grow more things than I have room for,” said Etienne, who grew up in Perry County. “Like the sweet potatoes. They are out of control, and I knew they would get big and probably too big, but I wanted purple sweet potatoes this fall.”

He no longer has separate beds for vegetables and herbs, so he works them in wherever he can, amid the lantanas, cannas and elephant ears. “In some ways, it’s easier to do things separately, so you know what’s happening here or there. But here, everybody grows together. It’s what I like.”

Besides gardening, Etienne raises chickens and rabbits for show. He uses the rotted manures in his garden, a practice he says helps plants thrive.

When he’s not in the garden, he’s involved in his neighborhood,where he’s been living for about 14 years. A former member of the Fountain Square Neighborhood Association, he now is helping develop Pleasant Run Grocer, a co-op for the area. He loves the area’s restaurants, counting Santorini Greek Kitchen and Siam Square as two of his favorites, with an occasional stop at Peppy Grill.